Category Archives: Best of

40′s movies marathon – best of 1948

Well, that was 1948. A year of slow but noticable change in the movie industry, and of change in this marathon, where I learned how to upload clips of the scences I can’t or don’t want to forget. You can also find the clips on YouTube, and that may actually be more interesting than these reviews, because is there anything more pointless than reading about movies? I try to make clips that represent what I liked about the movie, so if you like the clip, you’ll probably like the movie.

Best of the best

Rope

The Red Shoes

Literary classics

Macbeth

Hamlet

Oliver Twist

Meanwhile, in the former Axis

Angry murdering murderers and the murdering murderers who murder them

Raw Deal

The Man From Colorado

Key Largo

Act of Violence

Red River

The Treasure of Sierra Madre

Road House

Disney at their worst

Melody Time

So Dear to My Heart

Preston Sturges at his worst

Unfaithfully Yours

I can’t think of more categories

Daughter of Darkness

Louisiana Story

Krakatit

40′s movies marathon – best of 1947

Here’s to 1947, a year inbetween other years. 1947 also happened to be the last year of the so-called Hollywood “golden age”, by which movie historians mean the period when the major studios could do whatever the hell they pleased, because they owned the stars and the movie theaters, and had no real competitors. In 1948 the studios lost an anti-trust suit and had to sell off their theaters, and then television took off, which eventually gave us MacGyver, the culmination of all entertainment history, but that’s all in the future. Here are my favorite movies from 1947, by category:

Wtf was that?!

Black Narcissus

Fun and dancing

Good News

It Happened in Brooklyn

English (and Irish) gangsters

Brighton Rock

Hue and Cry

Odd Man Out

Noir

Ride the Pink Horse

Out of the Past

T-Men

Railroaded!

First-person shooters

Lady in the Lake

Dark Passage

The funny humor

The Senator was Indiscreet

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

The Sin of Harold Diddlebock

Domo arigato, mr Kurosawa

One Wonderful Sunday

Other

Dreams that Money Can Buy

40′s movies marathon – best of 1946

Trends of the year: Everyone’s making noir, and it’s getting a bit old. The only funny comedy team of the 30′s and 40′s makes their last movie. Horror isn’t particularly scary, but it’s getting to a point where it’s no longer just some guy in monster makeup walking through the fog. And Britain keeps doing their own thing.

Favorite moments: A pilot jumping to his death, Peter Lorre going mad, two professional killers walking into a diner, Vincent Price being EVIL, and Rita Hayworth being indecent.

British invasion

A Matter of Life and Death

Great Expectations

I See a Dark Stranger

The Captive Heart

Green for Danger

Pink String and Sealing Wax

Noir

Noir on Ice

The yearly Hitchcock

Notorious

Post-war reality check

Till the End of Time

The Best Years of Our Lives

Creeps, freaks and amputated limbs

House of Horrors

Bedlam

The Beast with Five Fingers

Depressed Europeans

Kris

Shoeshine

Ivan the Terrible – Part 2

The rest

The Razor’s Edge

It’s a Wonderful Life

Three Strangers

Humoresque

A Night in Casablanca

40′s movies marathon – best of 1945

The nice thing about watching old movies year by year is that, having now watched early 40′s war-related movies since, oh, April last year, (I was slower back then), I enter 1946 tired of all things war-related, just like the movie audiences of the time, (except for the trauma, missing limbs and lost friends etc.)

That said, I’ve been astounded by the quality of contemporary World War II movies. The British movies surprised me the most. Hollywood is consistently good at this point, but the British movies are the most creative and ambitious. Hollywood films war. Britain films a society at war, changing under the impact.

Here are my favorites from 1945:

Thugs and women of negotiable virtue

The yearly Hitchcock

Spellbound

War, huh, what it is good for

A Walk in the Sun

The Story of G. I. Joe

The True Glory

To the Shores of Iwo Jima

Perfect Strangers

A Bell for Adano

The Way to the Stars

Various islanders

‘I Know Where I’m Going!’

Caesar and Cleopatra

The jokes, they are funny

A Royal Scandal

Zombies on Broadway

Wonder Man

Hello kitty

The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail

The Famous Sword Bijomaru

That puppet still freaks me out

Dead of Night

Isle of the Dead

Dramatic performances

The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Lost Weekend

Roughly Speaking

40′s movies marathon – Best of 1944

1944 is over, and it’s time to list my favorite movies of the year:

Preston Sturges FTW

The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek

Hail the Conquering Hero

Shadows and dark intentions

The Mask of Dimitrios

Ealing & Powell & Pressburger

A Canterbury Tale

Champagne Charlie

Fiddlers Three

Cheer up, there’s a war on!

Up in Arms

Pin Up Girl

Bands of brothers (and sisters)

Other oddities

The True Story of Lilli Marlene

As the new year begins, many questions remain to be answered. Will the war end this year? If it does, will war musicals end as well, or mutate into something even more horrible? And is this the worst decade EVER, or what?

40′s movies marathon – best of 1943

As a service for readers who have misunderstood the movie marathon concept, and think it’s about me being nice and selecting all the Classic Movies for you, here’s my favorites from 1943: